June 1878: Automation, metalworking and specialisation

One of the joys of ferreting through the Engineer archives is in stumbling upon an article that, while it appears prosaic from its heading and even the accompanying illustration, turns out on closer inspection to contain fascinating nuggets of history. So it was that, while looking through a piece about the early development of the phonograh (which we’ll return to in a later issue) it became apparent that the adjacent article, under the unpromising title of ‘Bent Cranks’, dealt not only with important advances in metallurgy and tooling, but also with a trend in the engineering industry of 1878 that we’re still seeing the effects of today.

In engineering terms, the main thrust of the piece concerns the discovery that, if a material is bent slowly and gradually, it can assume a desired form without adversely affecting the material’s strength or other properties. It notes that iron cranks had previously been made by forging: “a crank was made, chiefly, by hammering, and each successive blow was attended by a change of form, effected in so short a period that it may be considered as without assignable duration, the iron being much distressed by the process.